See my Ego grow

We've flooded ERC with grad students. In the corner by the window, open to passers-by, ready to show their faces, sit the founding members of the North American Levinas Society. Sol Neely has his back to the window, and I keep looking at them and smiling--I hope he doesn't think I'm trying to flirt. It just amuses me that "The North American Levinas Society," such a big name, such a prestigious sounding organization, is really just those five people I know by association, if not better, just kids in my head even though they're all over 25 and have mortgages and the like. My colleagues are doing things that are becoming knowledge, public record, authority, something to be cited, part of a body of philosophy. ANd they're sitting in ERC around a cheap table, drinking really good espresso drinks, making hand gestures that have something to do with "Community" (open hands, spreading wide) and the Other (clasped hands, drawing inwards).
Dave's revelation that our course material--the kinda fluffy little blogs we're posting almost haphazardly (trying to meet his weekluy requirements)--will most likely be cited by someone has made me freeze up a little, mentally. It's one thing to post blogs here, where few will find me but my friends, but it's another to Google "visual rhetoric and technology" and find my posts on the third page.